Seeds of Change edited by John Joseph Adams
Prime, $19.95, 240pp, hc, 9780809573103.
Editor John Joseph Adams’s newest anthology is an attractive little volume in which nine authors write about “paradigm shifts—technological, scientific, political, or cultural—and how individuals and societies deal with such changes,” according to his introduction. Overall, the anthology works. There are several thought-provoking stories, and they do all talk about significant changes.
I found about half the stories depressing, not for where they brought me, but for the worlds in which they were set, and the immediate futures of the narrators. I know that change frequently comes when people are the most uncomfortable, when their environment forces them to change, and in that respect, these stories worked. But I’m going to have to find some uplifting fiction soon. Mind you, that depression is not overwhelming, and is nearly always resolved, so it shouldn’t keep you from reading this book.
Ted Kosmatka leads off the book with “N-Words,” talking about a different kind of racism. This story depressed me, because I can see all too readily how the people of today would indeed act like the jerks in this story. Kosmatka shows us a glimpse of the future, when those jerks will lose, and it is plausible, but to get there from here will involve a lot of pain.
Jay Lake’s “The Future by Degrees” is a wonderful hard science fiction story: he posits a technological advance, and then sets his story in motion to see what happens to the characters. And it all follows very realistically. The depression in this story comes from the cynical, acquisitive nature of mankind: exactly what we are today. And though altruism may indeed win through, it’s a very tough road to travel. Lake also points out that sometimes, the conspiracy theories are fact.
K.D. Wentworth’s “Drinking Problem” again shows us the horror that is living under a paternalistic government, and the fanaticism that can accompany any social movement. In this case, you know you’re in trouble when your bottle wants to go down to the bar for a cold one.
Blake Charlton’s “Endosymbiont” may have caught me the strongest, if only because he writes about several processes I didn’t know about, but want to. Sort of the opposite of evolution, his society is growing to encompass other beings, if only it can trust them. Depressive factor: the main character’s impending self-sacrifice, which we will learn must come sooner or later, is heart-rending.
I think Ken MacLeod’s “A Dance Called Armageddon” may have been the weakest of the book. This is the only story told by a character who isn’t part of the paradigm-shifting events going on around him. He’s sitting it out, learning to live and accept, and just getting along. And while he is emblematic of how nearly all of us will experience the great upheavels of the future, we’d all much rather be in the thick of things.
Jeremiah Tolbert’s “Arties Aren’t Stupid” has the main character at the center of the change, but this street-artist doesn’t understand what’s happening around or to her. We do, and he’s given us a very small glimpse of a future world, almost too limited by the viewpoint character. Again, she sees the future just as we will: through our own limited eyes. But in a story with such sweeping themes, I wanted a greater vista.
Mark Budz gives us an echo of Kosmtka’s dealing with racism, but rather than the oak’s struggle against the all-consuming wind, “Faceless in Gethsemane” gives us the grass’s bending before that wind, changing to accept what we can’t really deal with. In this case, I was depressed at the thought that perhaps we’ll never be able to see past relative melanin amounts, unless we make ourselves unable to see them at all.
Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu sets “Spider the Artist” in the Nigerian delta, where today’s struggle to get the valuable oil out of a dirt poor, violent country, is expanded with a new technology. The story was acceptable, but not outstanding.
Tobias S. Buckell is the only author to set his story off the Earth, on a colony in the Asteroid Belt, where the “Resistance” is struggling against a newly formed dictator. But is a dictator truly evil if he comes to power by acclamation?
My favorites were “The Future by Degrees”, “Endosymbiont”, and “Resistance”, but the whole book is a pretty good, and pretty fast, read. You could do worse than to have your eyes opened with Seeds of Change.